Trollfens scenarios short?

By Trampsvest1980, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

At first glance the new trollfens maps are larger than most of base game maps.

After reading through the third scenario notes it states at the start of the overlords turn place 1 fatigue token in his play area.

The notes continue with after 9 fatigue tokens are on the overlords play area he wins the scenario.

Now that means the scenario can last a Maximum of 9 turns.

Am I missing the point?

Surely the game will be in mid flow at turn 9?

What are everyone else's thoughts on this?

I like my quests to play through for an hour or so but I'm thinking a 9 turn encounter will not stretch beyond half an hour.

Turns last a LONG time in these games, especially with a crafty OL who has a lot of open groups versus four heroes who have familiars and such. Our mage in the last campaign was a Geomancer Challara, and the player had five active 'things' to control: Challara, Brightblaze and three Summoned Stones. Naturally, his turns tended to take a while.

That's a fair point.

I think it's more a fact the scenario is so time restricted.

I've been looking at the remainder of the scenarios and they are not restricted to a number of turns but on certain criteria being set.

I like this approach. Sometimes the scenario will finish in a few turns but it's dependant on how the overlord and heroes approach their objectives?

How do you all feel this expansion compare to the others?

I love descent and I have all three expansions, the conversion kit, extra dice so far.

My boyfriend and I played the first quest (doing a mini-campaign since my other friends seem to hate Descent :( ); it was really fun so far. We plan on doing Quest #2 tonight.

EDIT: After completing the second and third quests, I do have to agree they are a bit shorter. The second in particular... my boyfriend wasn't able to save any of the villagers in the prison cart. He was too busy fighting Bol'Goreth while a carrion drake just plopped on the cart and gathered me fatigue tokens. Really, it was over in about five turns. It was a bit of a disappointing quest, though the setup and story was great.

The third quest went by much better. He was so close in killing Grug'nik (who actually had the key), but I managed to knock out Dezra and Okaluk on the last turn, so they had to stand up leaving Varikas to struggle in futile. I do have to say, Chi'kree is my favorite of the named monsters, and I proudly made sure she lived.

Even though they are a bit shorter than what I'm used to (they still did take over an hour each), we really enjoyed the new quests.

Edited by Ringskipper

I can't wait to lay my teeth into this. But PlainWhiteBread is correct. Many of the encounters we have are a minimum of two hours. That is just an encounter. A full quest normally take us anywhere between four to five hours. We have had a few longer then that.

AND LotW was always VERY long, even though act one was always only one encounter. If there was any reason to cut down the time for some encounters, it's because it was needed. I am not sure it was. We always seemed to enjoy the duking it out. But sometimes three to four hours for one encounter is a little ridiculous.

Also remember that the Trollfens quests are intended to be side quests to the main story, which may play some factor in their decision.

I have just received my copy of Trollfens and have been reading the Encounters and I have to say that I have always liked Encounters that have time pressure on 1 or both sides as it acts as a motivator and keeps players eyes on the victory conditions and stops them going round picking up all the search tokens, a choice has to be made.

I am confused by the Rewards sections of Ghost Town and Food for Worms as the first 2 paragraphs of each are the same:-

"If the heros win, they receive the "Workmans Ring" relic. Then place the "Source of Sickness" Advanced Quest card in play.

If the overlord wins, he receives the "Taskmasters Ring" relic. Then place the "Spreading Affliction" Advanced Quest card in play."

Does this sound like a misprint or if the players win Ghost Town and get the relic when the overlord wins Food for Worms does he take it off the and keep it for himself?.

How have people who have played these encounters resolved this?.

That sounds correct. I don't have the Trollfens yet, but Lair of the Wyrm was the same way.

In a standard campaign (with rumours and such), you can't play more than one Act I side-quest. This means you'll never play both Ghost Town AND Food for Worms, it'll always be one or the other.

If you're playing The Trollfens mini-campaign, where you play the first three Trollfens quests in sequence, the winner of Food for Worms would take the relic from whoever one Ghost Town. If the same side wins both quests, those players receive an additional XP instead, because they already have the relic. I believe there's a note to this effect in the mini-campaign rules.

Frozen Firebat is correct. I read that just last night ^.^